Mercer's songs were among the most successful hits of the time, including "Moon River", "Days of Wine and Roses", "Autumn Leaves", and "Hooray for Hollywood".

Lillian's father, born in Lastovo, in 1834 to Ivana Cucevic and Marijo Dundovic, was a merchant seaman who ran the Union blockade during the Civil War.

[citation needed] As a child, Mercer had African-American playmates and servants, and he listened to the fishermen and vendors about him, who spoke and sang in the Gullah language (also known as "Geechee").

[12] As a teenager in the Jazz Era, he searched for records by early black blues/jazz figures including Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Louis Armstrong.

[13] The family would motor to the mountains near Asheville, North Carolina, to escape the Savannah heat and there Mercer learned to dance (from Arthur Murray himself) and to flirt with Southern belles, his natural sense of rhythm helping him on both accounts.

Holed up in a Greenwich Village apartment with plenty of time on his hands and a beat-up piano to play, Mercer soon returned to singing and lyric writing.

[19] Mercer's first lyric, for the song "Out of Breath (and Scared to Death of You)" (1930), composed by friend Everett Miller, appeared in a musical revue The Garrick Gaieties in 1930.

He traveled to California to undertake a lyric writing assignment for the musical Paris in the Spring and met his idols Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong.

Upon his return, he got a job as staff lyricist for Miller Music for a $25-a-week draw, which give him a base income and enough prospects to win over and marry Ginger in 1931.

Johnny did not inform his own parents of his marriage until after the fact, perhaps in part because he knew that Ginger being Jewish would not sit comfortably with some members of his family, and he worried they would try to talk him out of marrying her.

Mercer's fortunes improved dramatically with a chance pairing with Indiana-born Hoagy Carmichael, already famous for the standard "Stardust", who was intrigued by the "young, bouncy butterball of a man from Georgia.

"[23] Mercer, later well known for rapidly writing lyrics, spent a year laboring over the ones for "Lazybones", which became a hit one week after its first radio broadcast, and each received a large royalty check of $1250.

Mercer became a member of ASCAP and a recognized "brother" in the Tin Pan Alley fraternity, receiving congratulations from Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, and Cole Porter among others.

Whiteman lured Mercer back to his orchestra (to sing, write comic skits and compose songs), temporarily breaking up the working team with Carmichael.

His next project, To Beat the Band, was a commercial flop, but it led to a meeting and a collaboration with Fred Astaire on the moderately successful song "I'm Building Up to an Awful Let-Down".

Mercer landed into a hard-drinking circle, and began to drink more at parties and was prone to vicious outbursts when under the influence of alcohol, contrasting sharply with his ordinarily genial and gentlemanly behavior.

"[28] Mercer's first big Hollywood song, the satirical "I'm an Old Cowhand from the Rio Grande", was inspired by a road trip through Texas (he wrote both the music and the lyrics).

[30] Mercer worked on numerous duets for himself and Crosby to perform: several were recorded, and two, "Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Shean" (1938) a reworking of an old vaudville song, and "Mister Meadowlark" (1940), became hits.

The song was "And the Angels Sing" and, although recorded by Crosby and Count Basie, it was the Goodman version with vocal by Martha Tilton and klezmer style trumpet solo by Elman that became a major hit.

"On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe" with music by Harry Warren, was a big smash for Judy Garland in the 1946 film The Harvey Girls, and earned Mercer the first of his four Academy Awards for Best Song, after eight unsuccessful nominations.

[37] Mercer was the star, and singers Ella Mae Morse and Jo Stafford were regulars on the program, with musical support from The Pied Pipers and Paul Weston and his orchestra.

In 1961, he wrote the lyrics to "Moon River" for Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's and for Days of Wine and Roses, both with music by Henry Mancini, and Mercer received his third and fourth Oscars for Best Song.

An indication of the high esteem in which Mercer was held can be observed in that he was the only lyricist to have his work recorded as a volume of Ella Fitzgerald's series of Song book albums.

The producer offered the commission to Paul Francis Webster and the result was "The Shadow of Your Smile", which became a huge hit, winning the 1965 Oscar for Best Original Song.

[11] In 1969, Mercer helped publishers Abe Olman and Howie Richmond found the National Academy of Popular Music's Songwriters Hall of Fame.

In 1971, Mercer presented a retrospective of his career for the "Lyrics and Lyricists Series" in New York, including an omnibus of his "greatest hits" and a performance by Margaret Whiting.

Well regarded also as a singer, with a folksy quality, Mercer was a natural for his own songs such as "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive", "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe", "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)", and "Lazybones".

ATCO Records issued Two of a Kind in 1961, a duet album by Bobby Darin and Johnny Mercer with Billy May and his Orchestra, produced by Ahmet Ertegun.

In 1960, Mandy married Bob Corwin, who was a pianist for Peggy Lee, Anita O'Day, and Carmen McRae, and also Mercer's long-time accompanist.

In describing his inspiration for the lyrics, Mercer told the "Pop Chronicles" radio documentary "[my] publicity agent ... went to hear Father Divine and he had a sermon and his subject was 'you got to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.'